Your path
to learning how to speak English
Next you should use either an online or offline software package to help you learn the English language. There are many sites or software packages available to help you learn to speak English. Look for one that initially focuses on speaking the language. Pick a site that uses pictures and the spoken word to help you begin to correlate English words with their meaning. Again, at this stage you should focus on learning to understand and speak English, not necessarily reading and writing the language. Many websites will also offer to pair you with a native English speaker to serve as your mentor.
Pick a site that uses voice communication with a native English speaker so that you can practice listening and speaking in English. Practice dialogue with this person. Initially have small conversations, and build up to having much more detailed conversations with the native English speaker. Listen to their words carefully, and try to emulate what they are saying.
As you become more comfortable in learning how to speak English, steer your conversations to things that will also help you learn the culture of the country. Ask questions about London or other parts of the UK that will help you put the language in context. They will likely use slang and local expressions, that you will need to be familiar with when you visit the UK. This will begin to prepare you for your visit to the UK.
Just like a child advances to learning the written word while still mastering the spoken word, you should begin to work on learning to read and write in English now as well. Start looking at English newspapers and other publications. A good place to begin would be to look at English websites. You can use the translate feature in Google to convert the website to your native language, and use that to compare to the English. Read the English alongside the translation and try to understand the words in English. Look at a new English website everyday. Pick websites in different genres, news, politics, entertainment, sports, blogs, etc. In addition to learning the language, you will also get a better feel for the culture. This will also help in understanding the slang that is used in different parts of the UK, and among different age groups. Again, this begins to prepare you for your visit to learn English in London.
To learn how to speak English takes quite a commitment. At this point you should be listening to English media every day (movies, radio, or television), looking at an English website daily, and working online with your English mentor and using the other tools available at the Learn how to speak English website. Now that you are beginning to learn how to read and write in English, you can expand on your daily tasks.
Start keeping a diary in English. Write down the new English words you learn each day. Put these in alphabetical order, and revisit these words every day. Each day at to the list and revisit the words that wrote down previously. This will help you expand your English vocabulary. Write down a sentence or two about something that happened that day, or how you felt. Each day try to make the sentence more complicated, eventually writing down several sentences, and even paragraphs.
Over time you may begin to write about the movies and television shows that you watched in English, and about the English websites that you peruse each day. You can also write about anything else in your life, just do it all in English. You should get your mentor to review your diary (may not want to make it too personal), and give you any pointers on improving your English writing skills.
To improve your reading comprehension in English, start reading English books. You should start with children’s books which use much simpler English words, and advance from there. Ask your mentor for suggestions of English books. Children’s books also often are full of pictures which will help you understand the meaning of the English words. On the learn how to speak English websites, they will often have suggested reading for students. Some of these websites may even offer downloadable eBooks. These are features to consider when picking a website to use for learning how to speak English.
In addition to keeping a diary, you can begin to communicate via email with your English speaking mentor. Send your mentor an email every day, assuming they are okay with that. Ask them to respond to you as well. Start off small, just asking them how they are doing. Each day make the email more complicated. Add a sentence to the length of the email each day until it is several paragraphs long. Ask your mentor to correct your grammar. Talk about different subjects, you can use the websites you visit each day as a source for your emails. For example, if you visited a sports website and found out about a particular sporting event, ask them the details of that event. This will help you now only learn how to speak the English language, but to be able to converse with a native speaker about topics in the UK.
At this point you have invested a lot of time in learning English. Each day you should be watching an English television show or movie, looking at and understanding an English website, writing in a diary in English, sending an email to your English mentor, reading an article or part of a book in English, communicating in English with your online mentor, and using the tools available on the website to learn to understand, speak, read, and write in English. This is quite a commitment, and there is more to come. You are learning now at once how to communicate fully in English, understand the English language and be able to speak, read, and write in English as well.
In order to communicate well in English you will need to be able to master all parts of the language; understand it, and then be able to speak, read and write in English. All parts of these are important if you are to be fully functional in an English speaking country. Is there one part of learning the English language that you should concentrate on more than others? Well, when we communicate with others in any language, the most important thing is to be able to understand what they are saying. The next most important thing is to be able to speak the language, next is to be able to read the language, and finally to be able to write in the English language. That is why you have been watching an English TV show or movie every day from the beginning, and listening to your mentor speak the language. All of these help your comprehension skills. The rest follows from there.